How fast should my 120GB SSD be?

Recommended Posts

I need an ssd for my gaming pc. I will use hdd for everything but i want to store windows on the ssd since i heard it works faster that way. Im on a budget so whats the ideal ssd speed i should look for considering my specs:

Link to post

Share on other sites

By default the motherboard will configure the memory at 2133 Mhz or 2400 Mhz.

Memory sticks have a few presets stored inside them which can be used by motherboard to configure the memory sticks at frequencies higher than those values, so by enabling XMP you can configure the memory to run at 2666 Mhz or 2933 Mhz or 3000 Mhz or 3200 Mhz (if you actually buy memory sticks that support such high frequency).

Ryzen processors prefer memory running at higher frequency, so it's really worth going for 3000 Mhz memory if you can, and the price difference is not that high.

Also, regarding SSD.

Since you have a Ryzen, ideally you would want to buy a SSD with nvme, because the Ryzen has 4 pci lanes dedicated to the m.2 connector, so you'd have the fastest lowest latency possible between the SSD and the processor.

However, if you're on a budget, an operating system will run perfectly fine even from a SATA based SSD. You want nvme when you have to deal constantly with big files, with large transfers, and in your case, that's not the case. Windows 10 won't work faster on nvme SSD compared to SATA, or if it's works just a bit faster, you won't notice it in practice.

So you can safely choose a SATA based SSD. Which one... well, I'd say stick to brand names like (in no particular order) Samsung, Sandisk, WD (they bought Sandisk so Sandisk or WD SSDs are the same thing), A-Data, Corsair, Kingston, Crucial (it's a brand of Micron, one of the largest NAND manufacturers),

If possible, you should pick something that uses MLC which has higher endurance and supports more writes compared to TLC based SSDs so they'll last longer... for example you may be able to write up to 100 TB on a 120 GB MLC based SSD during its life, while a TLC based 120 GB SSD may only handle 70-80 TB.

MLC based SSDs are dying breed these days, so if you can't find any, then if possible look for TLC drives that have NAND chips made using larger processes, or look at the TBW values ( TB written over the life of the SSD)